Prison Fellowship founder Charles "Chuck" Colson, who served time at Maxwell Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery in 1974 for obstruction of justice while he was an aide for President Nixon, returned to Alabama on Easter weekend to visit inmates.

He spoke today during a chapel service at Donaldson Correctional Facility in western Jefferson County, after visiting Maxwell prison in Montgomery on Friday. "It brought back a lot of memories," Colson said. "My overwhelming feeling was gratitude."

Colson spent seven months at Maxwell before he founded Prison Fellowship in 1976 and published his bestselling memoir, "Born Again," that same year.

He plans to visit Bibb Correctional Facility on Sunday. He said he spends Easter weekends visiting inmates because he wants to see people transformed by faith.

"We put too many people in prison for too long a time," Colson said. "We've created a prison industrial complex. That costs a lot of money."

Speaking to inmates at the chapel service at Donaldson, Colson said, "You guys been busted? You know what it's like? Jesus knows. He was busted. They took the son of God and put him in a solitary cell. They whipped him and made him carry a cross to Golgotha."

Jesus had few possessions, like many of the men in prison, he said. "He was born in a borrowed manger, he rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey, he was buried in a borrowed tomb."

Prisoners are in a tomb of sorts, but Jesus gives inmates hope, Colson said. "Easter is about a man taken to prison, executed and put in a tomb. But that tomb couldn't keep him."

After the chapel service, Warden Gary Hetzell took Colson to meet with the 24 men on Death Row at Donaldson, which is the highest-security prison in Alabama. Hetzell allowed the men out of their cells and they sat around in chairs to talk with Colson.

There are about 1,540 inmates at Donaldson, Hetzell said, down from more than 1,600 in a prison meant to hold 968.

A lawsuit filed by lawyers of inmates, which alleged that Donaldson was overcrowded and dangerous, was settled Thursday with prison officials agreeing to make changes.

The prison has also implemented restricted movement policies and wristbands that denote what areas prisoners should be allowed in to increase safety, he said.

Wetzell said a third of all inmates at Donaldson are in for life without parole. "This is where they send people they can't handle anywhere else," he said. "You've got to figure out what pushes the buttons for good behavior."

Hetzell agrees with Colson that alternatives to incarceration need to be explored. "It's a major dilemma," Hetzell said. "They want to lock everyone up and throw away the key."

Colson recalled that one of his fellow inmates at Maxwell, who worked in the laundry with him, was an obstetrician who was a former chairman of the American Medical Association. "There are all kinds of ways to punish people," Colson said. "The corrections budgets in many states exceed the education budgets. We end up spending more to incarcerate people than to teach children. We can't afford it. We need to get more sensible."